Wappin' Wharf Part 19

JOE: You mistake me, Captain. My father is the King of England. I am but the Prince of Wales.

SAILOR CAPTAIN: Alas, sire, we bring you heavy news. Your Royal Father, the King of England, has been killed, fighting gloriously on the soil of France.

JOE: Bear with me. My grief has leaped the channel. My thought is a silent mourner at my father's grave. Shall a King sink to the measure of a mound of turf for the tread of a peasant's foot? Where is now the ermine robe, the glistening crown, the harness of a fighting hour, the sceptre that marked the giddy office, the voice, the flas.h.i.+ng eye that stirred a coward to bravery, the iron gauntlet shaking in the pallid face of France? All--all covered by a spadeful of country earth.

Captain, has Calais fallen to our army's siege? Are the French lilies plucked for England's boutoniere?

SAILOR CAPTAIN: Calais has fallen.

JOE: Then G.o.d be praised even in this hard hour. By heaven's help I throw off the idle practice of my youth. The empty tricks and trivial habits of the careless years, I renounce them all. A wind has scoured the sullen clouds of youth. My past has been a ragged garment, stained with heedless hours. Tonight I cast it off, like a coat that is out at elbow. My father henceforth lives in me.

(_Meg, at her entrance, has sniffed the wasted grog. Her nose, surer than a hazel wand, inclines above the hearth. She bends to the lovely puddle. She employs and tastes her dripping finger--covertly, with mannerly regard to the Prince's rhetoric--sucking in secret his good health and happy returns, so to speak. The liquor warms her tongue--not to drunkenness, but to ease and comfort. The hearth-stone is her tavern chair._)

MEG: (_not boisterously--with just a flip of her trickling finger, as if it were a foaming cup_). Hooray! I wants ter be the first, yer Majesty, ter swear allegiance to yer throne. I saw yer future in the gla.s.s. Ol' Meg knowed yer, like she had rocked yer in the cradle. I told yer I would come in yer hour o' danger. It was me reached through the winder fer the gun ter save yer. It was me whistle that yer heard, dearie, hurryin' up the sailormen as Betsy went ter fetch.

JOE: Thanks my good woman. We grant you a pension for your love.

(_She quests back to her pool of grog. She finds a spoon. She sits to the delicious salvage, with back against the chimney and woolen legs out-stretched. Speeches to her are nothing now. We cannot expect her help in winding up our play. The burden falls on Joe. We must be patient through a sentimental page or two._)

JOE: Ha! My velvet cloak, which I left at Castle Crag when I laid aside the Prince and took disguise. These unintentioned ruffians by their dirty jest have clothed me to my office.

SAILOR CAPTAIN: I swear my allegiance, your Majesty.

JOE: I rely on my sailors to clear the coast and seas. But first I want your allegiance in another high concern. Some fourteen years ago, when I was a lad of ten, I journeyed with my royal father to the castle of the Duke of Cornwall, which stands high on the wind-swept coast. Its giddy towers rise sheer above the ocean until the very rooks nesting in the battlements grow dizzy at the height. It is the outer bastion of the world, laughing to scorn the ocean's siege.

In that castle, Captain, there lived a little girl; and she and I romped the sounding corridors together. And once I led her to an open 'brasure in the steep-pitched wall, and held her so that she might see the waves curling on the rocks below. And tales of mermaids I invented, and s.h.i.+pwreck and treasure buried in the noisy caverns of the rock, where twice a day the greedy tide goes in and out to seek its fortune. And far afield we wandered and stood waist-deep in the golden meadows, until the weary twilight called us home.

And I remember, when tired with play, that her mother sang to us an old song, a lullaby. Her voice was soft, with a gentleness that only a mother knows who sits with drowsy children.

And to that little girl I was betrothed. It was sworn with oath and signature that some day I would marry her and that, when I became king of England in the revolving years, she would be its queen.

BETSY: By what miracle did you know me, Hal?

JOE: It was the song you sang. Your voice was the miracle that told the secret. With unvarnished speech I woo you. I love you, Margaret, and I ask you to be my wife.

MEG: (_faintly--floating in a golden sea of grog_) Hooray!

(_Joe takes Betsy in his arms and kisses her._)

JOE: The magic of your lips, my dear, is the miracle that answers me.

My loyal sailors, I present you. Margaret, d.u.c.h.ess of Cornwall, Countess of Devon, Princess of the Western Marches, by right and t.i.tle possessor of all land 'twixt Exeter and Land's End. And now, by her consent and the grace of G.o.d, the wife of Harry, King of England.

CAPTAIN: Leetle Betsy, I fergives yer.

DUKE: I asks yer health, though I swings termorrer.

PATCH: And may yer live long and 'appy!

DARLIN': We 're lovin' yer, Betsy.

BETSY: My gracious lord, for these three years this cabin has been my home. These are my friends--the only friends I have ever known. They fed me when I had no food and they kept me warm against the cold. Must they hang? I ask you to pardon them.

DARLIN': Glory ter G.o.d!

JOE: The pardon is granted. Captain, strike off their irons!

DARLIN': We loves yer, Betsy.

CAPTAIN: We are fonder of yer than grog and singin' angels.

PATCH: I thanks yer, King.

DUKE: It were jest an hour ago, settin' in that chair, I asks ter splice yer, Betsy, keel ter topsail. The ol' Duke never thought the Countess of all them places, and the Queen o' England, ter boot, would ever be settin' on his knee, pullin' at his whiskers--him askin' her ter name the 'appy day.

BETSY: It was a prior attachment, Duke.

CAPTAIN: We 'll serve yer, King, like we served ol' Flint.

PATCH: Top and bottom, fore and aft.

DUKE: We 'll brag how the King o' England and us has drunk grog together, and how the Queen washed up the mugs.

MEG: (_in a whisper_). Hooray!

JOE: And now, Captain, lead the way. We must speed to London.

BETSY: Good by, Duke. Some day you will find a girl who cooks roast pig that crackles.

DUKE: A blessin', Betsy, on yer laughin' eyes!

CAPTAIN: A health ter King Hal and his blus.h.i.+n' bride!

ALL: King Hal! Leetle Betsy!

(_With a wave of the hand Joe departs, and with him, Betsy, who kisses her fingers to the pirates in farewell. The sailors follow. The pirates and Darlin' are left. The pirates sit at the table. They exchange glances of satisfaction. They unb.u.t.ton for a quiet evening at home. Kings are but an episode in a pirate's life. They return to the happy routine of their lives. Our adventure has circled to its start._)

PATCH: Darlin'! Me friend, the Duke, is thirsty. Yer had better mix another pot o' grog. Yer does n't want ter be a foolish virgin and get ketched without no grog.

DARLIN': (_at the fire_). Yer coddles yer stomich, Patch.

PATCH: The Duke, he knows a leetle dear as is jest waitin' ter come flutterin' ter his lovin' arms. I thinks it 's yer whiskers, Duke.

CAPTAIN: Yer can pull one, Betsy, fer the locket that yer wears. We is laughin' at yer, ol' walrus.

DUKE: Kings is bigger than Dukes. I looses without no kickin' up.

There 's no one like Darlin' fer mixin' grog.

DARLIN': Fer that kind word I 'm lovin' yer.

(_She fills the cups._)